LATEST ADDITIONS

Jim Pugh: New American Symphonies; Vivaldi: Concerti per fagotto VI, Sergio Azzolini, L'Onda Armonica, Rebekah Heller: Righteous Rage; Moszkowski: Orchestral Music, Volume 4, Sinfonia Varsovia/Ian Hobson; R. Strauss: An Alpine Symphony; Metamorphosen, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Edward Gardner.

Ambrose Akinmusire/Mary Halvorson: Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings; Tyshawn Sorey: Members... Don't!; Steve Wilson: Enduring Sonance.

Kacey Musgraves: Middle of Nowhere; The Red Clay Strays: Grateful; Noah Kahan: The Great Divide.

In a college music class I teach in New York City, the question of whether rhythm or melody is more important comes up every semester. Not surprisingly, given the age of the average college student, rhythm is always the clear winner. The influence of hip-hop has almost made the question moot.

This is a most unusual review: two premium products reviewed as a set. It was intended as a short review, but the Innuos NazaréNET ($32,000) and NazaréFLOW ($32,000 base price + optional custom DAC output module) require lengthy explanations.

I have been fascinated with Dirac, the Swedish audio-optimization software company, ever since I noticed the Dirac booth in the back at CEDIA 2010 in Atlanta. This was not a demonstration but a tease, a tantalizing promise of a cure for problematic listening room acoustics using digital filters to adjust loudspeaker response in both the frequency and time domains

Making a turntable's platter spin at exactly 33¹/₃ rotations per minute sounds like it should be an easy task, but in fact it's hard to do precisely. Just getting the platter to turn is easy enough, but there are two forces trying to stop the platter that you need to overcome: friction from the bearing that supports the platter, and friction from the stylus riding in the groove.